The Mark of Zorro (1919) Johnston McCulley

I had a Zorro book as a kid. I have no idea where it came from–I’m sure my mom didn’t buy it for me. It may have been left at the house by the previous occupants, like the James Bond books I eventually read and loved.

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Lion of Ireland (1981) Morgan Llywelyn

Lion of Ireland recounts the story of Brian Boru, one of the greatest kings of Ireland. He sought to unite all the small kingdoms and dispose of the petty rivalries that allowed the Norsemen to repeatedly plunder Irish cities.

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Drat! Darn! POOOOOP!

(sigh)

All the cool CSS stuff I did the other day? Well, fixing one thing, broke another. So I had to roll back all the lovely fixed positioning navigation panes.

Apparently linking to an anchor will move that portion of the page to the very top of the page–behind the fixed position elements. And I can’t find any style information that would allow me to tell the browser to start anchor links, say, 12ems down.

So it was a lovely idea, despite the fact that it failed in execution.

But if I ever figure out how to fix the anchor problem…

ADDENDUM the First:
But, I redid my main page, to get rid of some of the ugly IE quirks. So even using IE, things should look good now.

Sometimes I wish I carried a camera with me all the time.

I love to people watch–there are so many different things to see, from badly dressed college students, to elderly couples, to parents arguing with their kids. Sometimes it’s amusing, sometimes it’s depressing, but most of the time it’s just fascinating. You’ll catch a small glimpse into someone’s life that may or may not be representative of who they are.

Sometimes just glancing in the rearview mirror shows me a curious vignette.
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Geek Stuff!

I’m really pleased with this.

Non-geeks may wish to quit reading here.

I figured out a work around for the fact that Internet Explorer doesn’t support fixed positioning. Not a big deal if the element is on the side, but I wanted the fixed element at the top of the page, and IE would mush everything together making the text at the top of the page unreadable.

However if I place the fixed positioning elements inside an absolute positioning element, IE seems to read it correctly, while Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera will keep the fixed elements at the top of the screen.

Cool!

Inspired by Stuff on my Cat, S has taken her own foray into cat decoration.

Now we just need to convince her to get the pictures developed.

1,847 soldiers have died in Iraq since the start of the conflict.

223 soldiers have died in Afghanistan.

Baltimore Sun Rememberence Site

Digital Memorial for those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Please remember our veterans and those who have given their lives, not with ribbon magnets but with benefits for our soldiers, our veterans, and their families.

Tom’s post on Driving in Portland reminded me:

WVU’s fall semester begins Monday!

Any driving you need to do in Morgantown should be completed by Thursday, after which traffic will come to a complete standstill for the next month, until students start skipping classes.

A full size recreation of a Viking boat–made of popsicle sticks. The goal is to sail across the Atlantic.

That is really really really cool.

The comments on a thread over at Making Light have got me thinking about reading. The post was initially about people who don’t get fantasy, but what struck me was a passing comment on how people read:

For some of us, the irony and the metaphor and the assorted not-story bits are what we enjoy chewing on…Speaking solely for myself, the story element, no matter how cracking, rarely satisfies.

This completely boggles my mind–the idea of reading for anything besides the story.

When I read, for the most part, it is to become absorbed in the story. I may notice historical details, which I find interesting, but metaphor? That reminds me of the English literature classes that I thought I would like, but instead always found disappointing. I don’t care what different parts of the story stand for. I care what the characters do and what happens to them–usually to the point that I have trouble putting down the book and doing something else.

I read for the way that the books make me feel.

When I look over at my bookshelves, I can pick out my favorite fantasy books at a glance: Sean Russell’s The Initiate Brother, Guy Gavriel Kay’s Sarantine Mosaic, Steven Brust’s Viscount of Adrilankha, David Edding’s Belgariad, Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint, Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori… and what all these books have in common is that I love the stories they tell, I love the way the stories make me feel what the characters feel, I love the characters.

That people would read fantasy for some other reason is astounding to me–I cannot wrap my mind around the idea. Sure I read non-fiction to learn–I enjoy learning. But fiction is an escape. I may wonder whether the details in a piece of historical fiction are correct or not, but that just makes me want to read more about the subject. (How do I love Google–let me count the ways.)

Is this reading fiction as a mataphor common? Do a lot of people do this? Why do they do this? Doesn’t it get in the way of enjoying a book?

Weird.

So yesterday I spent the afternoon and evening relaxing on the sofa reading (and it was good too, let me tell you.) Yet somehow yesterday evening, despite the fact that I did nothing more strenuous that brushing my hair, I managed to pull a muscle in my shoulder.

(This is the point where you make the joke about how you’ve seen my hair, so obviously it was the hair brushing that hurt my shoulder. You’re very funny.)

So I really don’t know how I did it, all I know is that when I straighten my elbow and raise my arm my shoulder hurts.

But really, how many people can say they pulled a muscle reading? Aren’t you jealous of my extreme geekiness? I thought you were.

Stuff on my Cat

As a cat owner, I totally understand this.

Yesterday we watched The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Like Star Wars I hadn’t watched the movies in years. Now to be honest, when I first watched The Empire Strikes Back I hated it. I was 11 when The Empire Strikes Back came out, and knowing that I had to wait three more years before I found out what happened was awful. At that age three years was an eternity; I was miserable. So by the time Return of the Jedi came out I was glad to know what happened, but the magic was gone.

But coming back to these movies, I really liked them. Being able to put in the next DVD made the ending of The Empire Strikes Back perfectly fine (although I still hate cliff hangers). The Ewoks were still cute, but they weren’t as cutsey as I remembered, so I was quite pleased.

Until I got to the end of Return of the Jedi. At which point I began to scream and curse in absolute RAGE. Why the hell did George Lucas have to completely screw up the ending and stick Hayden Christensen into the last scene? It was like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, reminding me that no matter how much I loved these movies, George Lucas had to mess everything up with the vile Phantom Menace. I couldn’t just happily pretend that the prequel hadn’t happened, but he has to stick in that reminder.

Couldn’t he just has let us think that that was how Anakin *would* have looked had he not been turned into Darth Vader?

Grrr….

If anyone comes out with a DVD copy of the Return of the Jedi that has the correct, original ending–I want it, and I’ll pay good money for it. Actually, I want a copy of all three movies without the edits–no screwed up Jaba scene in the Mos Eisley space port, no extended scene in Jaba’s palace, although I’ll take the extra Cantina scenes. Those were lovely.

So I decided to play around with CSS menus.
Translation: I did something really geeky.

If you are using any browser other than Internet Explorer (Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, Firefox) and you go to my main page and place your cursor over the the first three options on the left (Books, Pictures, Misc) a sub menu will appear.

If you’re using IE, which doesn’t correctly render CSS, you won’t see the pop-up menus, but the options will still work. And the boxes will look screwed up. (So you should really be using Mozilla or Firefox.)

This is quite a geeky acomplishment, and I’m rather proud of myself.